Hacker News Reader

Comment by MezzoDelCammin | Hacker News Reader

"The bigger issue was that the energy demands for the house, which included hot water heating for the pool and hot tub, outstripped the electrical supply we could get on a rural residential build: 400A"

Am I the only one who almost spit out his coffee when reading this paragraph? I mean, building a remote home in the middle of a forest is a cool idea, sure. But then end up feeding the whole thing with 400A worth of electricity? And when the current is too high, end up supplementing with a propane generator?

Am I missing something? As a European, I'm used to way more modest figures for family homes - maybe 400V @ 25A plus gas for heating.

View on HN

A heated pool for a single-family home in the wilderness seems particularly decadent and indulgent.

It looks like they wanted a California house, with flat a roof and giant windows, in the Canadian Wilderness. But there's a reason houses in the mountains look the way they do. This house looks as out-of-place as a ski chalet would on the beach in San Diego. In any case, it looks as if they have enough money not to care.

I'm just laughing at a flat roof in Pemberton... It's a pretty ridiculous house.

Snow removal must be... fun.

I can't believe no one at any step of the process gave them a warning about flat roofs, huge glass windows, having a pool, etc. in frigid mountain areas with tons of snow. I feel like there must be a lot more to this story, like cycling through different architects and engineers until one would finally not tell them the idea was bonkers.

A flat green roof. Which is much worse than just a flat roof.

The drainage will clog and they’ll risk having a leaky roof every spring. And you can’t get up there with a snow shovel because it’s a green roof and you’d scrape off all the dirt and plants.

Not defending the other design choices, but there are places in snowy mountain areas where (almost) flat roofs are common [0].

[0] https://www.davos.ch/en/information/portrait-image/storybook...

Seems like the flat roofs in Davos were a conscious decision to safeguard against avalanches.

From the link: >" In order to guard against dangerous avalanches in snow-covered Davos, the houses were covered with flat roofs."

I wish they had detailed how flat roofs guards against an avalanche? What is the logic/physics at work there?

roof avalanches, presumably

https://www.webcenterfairbanks.com/2021/04/04/spring-melt-me...

It's also weirdly not mentioned in the article - the lack of any of this type of feedback, especially considering it's about building a home in the Canadian woods.

(Love your username, btw)

There are a lot of people willing to take an idiot's money.

I wonder if the pool can tolerate freezing solid in the winter, or if it cracks the concrete? Flat roofs might be okay if they're built right. In Oregon, people would look at you funny if you built a house with a flat roof, and yet almost all our commercial buildings have flat roofs, so apparently it works out somehow.

(Oregon has one semi-famous flat-roofed house that I'm aware of, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I suspect FLW hadn't actually ever been to Oregon: it looked like a house that belongs in Arizona or California. Anyways, the eventual owner of the land the house is built on wanted to tear it down and build a mansion, and after much protests they allowed some people to come in and take the house apart and reassemble it near Salem. After putting it back together, they found some of the original contractors who had built the house originally. Supposedly they took a tour of the house and declared that it must have been properly reassembled, because the roof leaks in all the same places.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_House_(Silverton,_Orego...

> I wonder if the pool can tolerate freezing solid in the winter, or if it cracks the concrete?

A lot of people have inground pools here in Quebec. AFAIK it's just a matter of removing some of the water before it freezes, to minimize the effects of expansion. It does tend to generate small cracks, but nothing that can't be patched over with annual maintenance.

In Pemberton, no less. An outdoor pool, _very_ large windows, open/not-enclosed outdoor patios, etc etc. They've basically planned to heat the outdoors when it is below 0C a few months out of the year; and most of the year it's below 18C. And all that exposed, non-insulated concrete. The thermal mass they have to heat is practically unbounded. Bonkers.

They're going to have a hell of the time with the weathering on that siding and roof in 10y, too.

Single-glazed windows, by the look of it. I was expecting triple.

... Yuuup.

I knew a person who tried to put in triple-glaze, in New Westminster, BC, and it took a special lien on the property along with special approval from the Province because they weren't allowed by the building codes at the time.

That was ~10y ago, so maybe it's changed now.

Edit: I saw someone else building a cabin with similar windows recently. They are double pane, they are just some sort of frameless unit, held together by the strip of black material around the edge. Whether they work probably comes down to how well the installer seals around the edge of the window.

And while the sliding glass doors look like they are single paned, look at the quadruple reflection. Isn't that usually caused by multiple sheets of glass in close proximity?

The external framing is also 2x6, so someone was thinking about insulation. I think it's just that after declaring victory on a well insulated house they then decided to heat the outdoors anyway by directly heating things that are out of doors.

Yes, I'm sure those are at least double pane. Modern windows (especially high end) can be both energy efficient and nice looking. Same goes for their concrete walls--its quite likely that they have insulation in wall cavities or embedded directly in the concrete itself. That being said--I'm sure it still costs a pretty penny to heat in the winter. Its just probably not as bad as you might think.

> Modern windows (especially high end) can be both energy efficient

Yes, compared to other windows. Compared to a well-insulated wall with external insulation and 6" of interior insulation, they're not great.

Good windows are an R5. A well-insulated wall cavity can easily be an R30.

That's the 'value engineering'.

Only if it doesn't burn down first in a forest fire.

Are there forest fires as far north as Vancouver? It gets wet & cold up there. I though forest fires was mostly a California problem.

Oh yes, yes there are.

Millions of hectares burn down every year:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_British_Columbia_wildfire...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_British_Columbia_wildfire...

Last year an entire town disappeared:

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-sept-7-2...

Dang, what makes the west coast so prone to burning? I've lived on the east coast all my life and have never encountered a wild fire. The biggest fires we get are ~1000 acres[1], and easily contained.

[1] https://www.providencejournal.com/story/news/2021/05/17/larg...

The west coast has large tracts of unoccupied, I maintained forest land, and a more Mediterranean climate (wet then much drier).

The two combine into large, periodic forest Fires.

The east coast has much fewer unbroken tracts of forest, and where it does have them they are more heavily managed and stewarded for a number of reasons.

The east coast was developed and property subdivided/allocated long before the tendency towards large national parks, monuments, etc.

It isn’t that these national parks or forests cause all these problems (though many of them DO feature prominently in these huge fires), they are also a sign of the very different nature of land allocation during the settling of the area.

You can see this pretty clearly if you pull up maps of federal land (national forests, national parks, blm land, etc). Several western states have more land owned by the federal government than anyone else.

They are all out west.

We have two seasons in BC, Avalanche[0] and Wildfire[1] - other than that, it's the "Best Place on Earth"

[0]https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/transportation/driving-an...

[1]https://www.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/f0ac328d88c74d07aa2ee...

Oregon was on fire most of 2020.

And the pine beetles are doing a number on BC. It's only a matter of time before those catch on fire.

As a European you probably don't have an outdoor heated pool & hot tub in a frigid northern climate.

I also think it's ridiculous, for what it's worth. 400A is a wild amount of electricity for a supposedly high efficiency, modern home.

My house has 350A split across two meters because we have a ground source heat pump which has a special electric rate. I don't think we ever actually use that much power.

Where I live we have to pay to the electric grid for the amps on the main breaker. Because the grid has to be able to provide those, needs to be planned accordingly, needs to have the proper diameter cables and transformers, etc. Even if we don't use them. So having 300A "just in case we need it" would be insanely expensive on the monthly bill. This amount of apmeres is more like for a workshop, small industrial or office building

Many utilities will do this based not on the amperage to the house but the peak kw used in a billing cycle - a capacity charge. This helps incentivize reduced peak usage. In your scenario it's strange because you have zero incentive to keep your maximum usage below the breaker amount, other than the per-kwh cost.

I live in the same such country with such rules. They assume rightly that if you request that amperage you will use it and they will plan and bill you to handle it. And yes we then also pay per kWh :)

Why would it be harmful to run at the amperage that I'm buying ? What disincentives do I need?

You'll find a hot tub/sauna in most Scandinavian cabins.

Yeah, but wood-heated right, and emptied before it goes solid.

No, a lot of saunas in Finland are electric heated. But they're still only 3*16A at most (and usually a lot less, but that depends on the size of the sauna). I think mine is ~7kW and still heats the sauna to high temperatures, just takes a bit more time.

I still don't get though, if living in rural area, why not heat the pool with wood. It just has that sensation that electric heater doesn't provide.

Is this for a wood-construction sauna with a heater warming up rocks that you can steam water off of? That's a lot less mass to warm up, mostly air, and a lot less ongoing energy loss than a big heated pool.

There is a common saying when living in areas when using wood for heat -

‘Wood warms you up three times. Once when you cut it, once when you split it, and once when you burn it’.

The amount of manual labor and time required to keep a pool warm from wood is monumental. It will definitely keep a fit man in the prime of his life busy and tired.

It isn’t something to sign up for lightly, especially for someone who may not have that kind of physical strength (or want it spent on heating their pool).

> why not heat the pool with wood. It just has that sensation that electric heater doesn't provide.

Is this some kind of new homeopathy? Wood memory gets into the water making two types of heat have a different sensation?

These are usually pretty small spaces. So heating them isn't that much of an problem. And going from 22 to 80 for a few hours a week or day isn't too wasteful.

Hot tubs are also rather small.

A sauna? Sure.

But a hot tub? There are very, very few bodies of water that you can submerge comfortably in that doesn't end up being a non trivial amount of energy to warm up, much less keep warm.

To each his own I guess.

> for Jess the pool was the centerpiece and outweighed all other concerns. For me it was the wood-burning fireplaces.

A proper Sauna would have satisfied them both!

I'm from the US and I was shocked they needed 400A plus propane. We draw more current then you guys because our voltage is lower but still, 200A services are pretty standard for large rural homes.

My thought is that power can go out for days at a time after a big storm, so propane is mostly a backup electricity/aux heat source.

Maybe they have a heat pump setup which switches to propane when it gets really cold.

Wood is there, but somebody needs to feed it. And people inevitably get old or lazy about it and depend more and more on the convenient heat sources available.

> I was shocked they needed 400A

Seconded. I recently completed an all electric high performance remodel, and with 200A service, I can power a heat pump, heat pump water heater, all electric kitchen and laundry, and an EV charger, with Amps to spare. This is in the mild Bay Area, and my heat pump draws about 6A (15A breaker). The largest loads are EV and cooktop/stove.

A 3000sqft custom house built to high performance standards (airtight and well insulated) can be space heated in a cold climate with a heat pump that draws no more than 24A (40A breaker) using a heat pump. At that load a modern heat pump will make 40kBTU of heat. There are many examples of this across Canada.

I just now read that they have an outdoor heated pool, though, so crazy as it sounds they are presumably using electricity to heat it.

> plus propane.

Apart from backup water heating when the power goes out, their hot tub will waste huge amounts of energy, so propane might be operationally cheaper than electricity.

I'm running a small hot tub in central New Hampshire. I figure it costs me $15 per month in the winter.

Edit: Service in the US is generally 200A or 400A. I'd say 400A is overbuilt for what they have, but that doesn't mean they actually use much of that capacity.

For example, I average 1000 kWh per month, which is about 1.39 kW 24/7, or 12 amps average on my 200A service. The 200A is to have headroom for peak demands, and we probably never get close to 200A.

If I were to rewire my panel (it's full), I'd go for the 400A - it's just heavier copper in the three lines to the entrance panel. That would not increase my monthly power bill right now, but it would provide lots of excess capacity in case I want to switch to heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Since we heat with wood and propane and don't use electricity for either and have mostly LED lighting and a gas stove, I do wonder where all the power is going, especially at night. Too many computers, I guess. Add analysis to my to-do list!

It's funny how removed we are from reality. Even if $15/month might be cheaper than a propane bill, it would be far far more expensive against the planet to heat it with gas/coal burned at a factory 100 miles away, converted to electricity, then converted back to heat inside the spa water heater.

I think that an air/water heat pump on the tub, with say a COP of 8, would be less expensive to operate than propane or straight electric. But, I couldn't justify the capital expense. (Small hot tubs are electric.)

I like my wood/propane mix for heating, because it's immune to power outages. At some point I'll get too old to cut/split/haul wood, though, and will have to figure something else out.

I'm not sure why there's a push to eliminate gas cooking in favor of electricity. Perhaps some people are concerned with methane leaks in the natural gas distribution system.

> I'm not sure why there's a push to eliminate gas cooking in favor of electricity. Perhaps some people are concerned with methane leaks in the natural gas distribution system.

It's that, as well as the fact that having a gas stove means you have a gas hookup in the first place, so you're more likely to also use it for heating. That in turn leads to more emissions than other heating methods produce.

Well, even with a catalyst, my wood stove puts out a lot of emissions. But, I don't live in an area with an inversion layer.

> I'm not sure why there's a push to eliminate gas cooking in favor of electricity.

It can make a lot of sense in urban areas. In addition to removing the methane leaks (with their high GWP), it reduces the need to install/maintain expensive natural gas distribution infrastructure, and also improves indoor air quality by eliminating NO2 and CO production within the house. If the power goes out, you just use a propane grill in the backyard, or a small butane stove.

> Small hot tubs are electric.

S̶p̶e̶c̶i̶f̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶w̶e̶r̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶a̶w̶a̶r̶e̶,̶ ̶s̶m̶a̶l̶l̶ ̶h̶o̶t̶ ̶t̶u̶b̶s̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶r̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶f̶r̶i̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶t̶e̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶c̶i̶r̶c̶u̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶p̶u̶m̶p̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶d̶i̶c̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶s̶.̶ ̶Y̶o̶u̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶a̶d̶d̶ ̶a̶ ̶s̶e̶p̶a̶r̶a̶t̶e̶,̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶e̶f̶f̶i̶c̶i̶e̶n̶t̶,̶ ̶w̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶u̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶u̶m̶p̶s̶ ̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶t̶e̶n̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶r̶e̶p̶l̶a̶c̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶n̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶.̶

Never mind. Apparently I was misinformed. The circulation pump moves the water through the heater, but isn't the primary heat source.

I don't think this is true. Could you source this? I've had several small outdoor electric hot tubs, and all of them have had dedicated heaters. The couple times I've had problems with the heater, the symptoms involved the pump running constantly and the tub never reaching temp. I'm sure there is some friction heating, but I don't think it's anywhere near enough to reach standard temperature.

Apparently you're correct, and I was misinformed. You could implement it this way—like how Tesla's newer designs can run the electric motor in a less-efficient mode to provide heat for the battery pack—but the designs I investigated did have separate heaters as part of the circulation system. (For some reason the specs for these were not listed in the product summary, but rather only in the manual.)

So in NH I am paying just over $4.20 a gallon for propane and about $0.18 a kwh for electricity. With those prices a propane heater for my hot tub would cost more to run. Also a heat pump heater for the hot tub would optimistically get around a 3-4 COP in warmer weather and 2-3 in the colder weather but either of those would lower your price to heat it considerably but the capital expenses neglect those savings.

Source: https://www.amsenergy.com/fuel-cost-calculator/

Interesting, thanks. Looks like burning shelled corn is the way to go. Or coal.

That area is almost exclusively hydroelectric power.

Er, which area is that? NH is almost entirely nuclear from the Seabrook site.

I just skimmed the article, but I thought it said it was in BC.

NH electric rates are $.20/kWh [1]. If you are spending $15/month for heating the hot tub, then you are consuming ($15/month)/($.20/kWh)=75kWh/month to heat it.

Assuming you are using are using a resistance heater (100% heating efficiency), to raise 200Gal of water (typical small hot tub size) from 50F to 100F requires about 25kWh of energy.

To only use 75kWh/month (255kBTU), you would need to only raise it to 100F less than 3 times a month, and that assumes that the water temp doesn't naturally drop below 50F (unlikely in NH).

It's likely you are spending significantly more than $15/month to heat it with electricity.

Propane is about $30/MBTU, which would work out to about $9/month for the equivalent amount of heat.

1. https://www.electricrate.com/residential-rates/new-hampshire...

2. https://bloglocation.com/art/water-heating-calculator-for-ti...

I pay $0.13 per kWh in my town. (That's my marginal cost.)

The tub is well insulated, with an insulated cover, so you need to account for that. My estimate on the hot tub cost is by comparing my kWh usage after the tub was installed to the prior year use.

Most small tubs are electric, like mine.

> I pay $0.13 per kWh in my town.

So assuming $15/month, you are using 115kWh, which is 392kBTU of heating energy. It takes about 83kBTU to heat 200gal of water from 50F to 100F, which would be like 5 full heat ups from 50F. Of course there are the other convolved factors you mentioned (insulation).

Believe me, it's worth $15 per month to my wife! So happy.

> they have an outdoor heated pool, though, so crazy as it sounds they are presumably using electricity to heat it.

That’s an almost ideal case for an air-to-water heat pump though, the heat capacity and efficiency of which go up as the output water temperature goes down. Pool heating (and snow melting) are ideal use cases that can support a very low output water temperature and still get the job done (as compared to baseboard or cast-iron radiator space heating).

reading this as a french, this is wild. AFAIK you can't even get more than 136A as an individual, you need to operate a company (if my calculation is correct - max. for individuals is 15kVa AFAIK). Huge majority is 6kVa / 230V => ~26A

And 100A isn't unusual, particularly for anything built more than 20 years ago.

My 100 year old house in the US has 100A service- though I'm thinking of upgrading to 200A service to help with Level 2 EV charging.

It was probably upgraded from ~30A at some point in the past as a requirement of a lender. Presumably it has circuit breakers? Those weren't even a choice in a 100 year old house when it was built AFAIK. I've been curious how well these jobs are generally done, when I was a kid it was a big selling point to have circuit breakers instead of fuses. I've always been curious how through some of those upgrades were, did they replace all the wiring too, does everything have grounds, etc. Or did they just pull a few 240 lines for AC/range/etc?

https://www.thespruce.com/service-panels-changed-in-the-1900...

Which says 100A didn't become common until the 1960's.

True. For comparison, I have a 60s era 1000sqft house in northern Canada that had a 60A service into a 50A breaker panel up until last year. For insurance, safety and maintenance reasons[0] we upgraded to a 200A service, but for a small house and a 3-4 person family 50A is sufficient provided your hot water heater is natural gas.

[0]: The incoming line was aerial and over the legal span length, so it had been attached to an insulator nailed to a tree halfway between the house and mast. Also the mast was deteriorating to the point that it needed to be replaced anyways and insurance was making noise about not allowing a new policy if it wasn't upgraded to at least 120A. We did a customer pole and went underground to the house. Much nicer aesthetics and I can now turn off a breaker on my side of the meter at the pole to do maintenance.

It's 400A at 240v, so, no, it's not more current than in the EU where most domestic loads are 230v.

as a heads-up, most electrical mains in the USA are 240v; they are wired two circuits in series for most residential applications. But you'll find a 240v plug in most homes; it's the industrial heavy-duty looking plug.

The amount of cognitive dissonance required to say "we want to limit impact" on one hand, and to run a 400Amp electrical connection to heat your hot tub and pool in Canada, is staggering.

"low impact" for North Americans, maybe... No wonder that we're at the begining of a climat change disaster.

I doubt most North Americans need a 400A connection. (How much wattage is that? 48kW?) I live in an ordinary single house in a boring suburb in the bay area, and on hottest days, if I have to use the A/C, the oven, and the dryer at the same time, maybe it would push it over ~10kW. Maybe once in a year.

> Bay Area

Most places in the US experience much harsher seasons than the Bay Area.

There are places where we waste energy because we're doing dumb stuff: in northern parts of the country, your house should be well insulated and designed for cold temperatures.

Then there are places like Nevada, which are just not suitable for large-scale habitation. "Can we make this monument to our hubris more energy efficient" is kind of missing the point, right?

True, most places would need to run A/C or heater much more often than California, but I doubt they need three times as powerful an A/C at any given moment.

400A @ 240v is 96kW

Do you really believe the average North American has a heated pool AND hot tub in a frigid northern climate?

I'll not defend our wasteful habits -- we really are screwing up the world over here -- but still, most North Americans don't have electrical outdoor heated pools. In a rural, fairly chilly area... that's really something.

The lack of self awareness of people is staggering. How is it even possible to be this blind to it?

Greenwashing is a state of mind.

Their contractor talked them into building it without a fixed budget. That's a pretty good financial incentive to just say "can do!" to every suggestion the owner makes.

If it’s cheap hydro power driven (like much of Canada), it isn’t absurd.

A lot of hydro power is ‘use it or lose it’, since the dams also provide flood control and MUST keep extra capacity free to absorb sudden water surges. They can’t just store everything they get.

The whole thing is pretend environmentalism. It starts out with some superficially "green" elements like solar power but eventually throws it all out the window when that conflicts with luxury or desire. In the end they've built a huge, inefficient house with enough embodied energy to power Ghana for a year, only accessible with the family's giant gas-guzzling truck, as depicted.

Pure comedy.

> A goal for the build was to limit impact to the site during construction, and then to limit the footprint of the home after completion. In pursuit of this we planned an efficient mechanical design that would feature solar panels for electricity generation tied to the grid, geothermal for heat exchange, and no fossil fuels.

Oh, great, sound like you have some good environmental principles!

> However, we quickly ran into several problems with this approach.

Yeah, it can be a bummer to sacrifice your own comfort. But it is worth it for the environment!

> The bigger issue was that the energy demands for the house, which included hot water heating for the pool and hot tub, outstripped the electrical supply we could get on a rural residential build: 400A.

Wow, that's a lot of electricity. Like, a loooooot. Maybe we can pare it down a little bit -- limiting our impact is important, right?

> We eventually settled on supplementing our electrical generation with propane, which we had hoped to avoid

Right?

O-oh. Oh so you're using propane to heat the pool.

Yeah.

The size and extravagance of this thing is rather off-putting. I was expecting a modest off grid passive house.

What gets me is that the space doesn't seem to get you very much - it's a 3-bedroom, 2.5-bath house.

I dunno, maybe my thought is unrealistic - but if I were to splash out a ton of money for a palatial rural manse, I'd shoot for something with a bit more space than a large-ish suburban home.

Especially because one of the most common uses of such a property is entertainment - forget having folks stay over unless you make the kids bunk?

Yeah, that bit made no sense to me. I'm not familiar with the location but clearly it's rural and only accessible by car. They also were living in Vancouver which sounds quite far away, and presumably have friends/family there.

So how are they going to be entertaining people all the time (they specifically mention entertaining large groups being important to them)? Come over for an evening, except one of you can't drink and has to drive 2 hours back at the end of the night??

Yep. My partner and I have had the same thoughts about having a property outside of the city that's large enough to entertain in. We jokingly call it The Compound - but there is something to the name I think in terms of how it needs to be designed to fulfill that need.

At a bare minimum it needs to be large enough to have a guest suite - the central socializing spaces like the kitchen and living room also need to be scaled for that use.

Ideally (assuming a grand budget) you can have separate structures for guests entirely.

But certainly one has to assume that guests are bunking over, given how remote the location is. It seems eminently unreasonable to assume guests are driving several hours at the end of the evening.

Top-to-bottom windows all over and narrow spaces .. it's actually amazing they fit it in 100KVA. This thing in winter would need about twice that just to not freeze. Hence the propane, and forget the tub and the pool.

There are probably other ways to build a modern-style home that don't involve this, but they currently aren't in vogue.

To which end, I wonder how long such a home would last, given the upkeep. The bling times come and go. Just look at history.

They might not have to worry about longevity, having built a home densely surrounded by trees in a wildfire prone area.

> I wonder how long such a home would last

3-5 years at most I think. I've seen futile attempts to sell such experiments.

After that time it's just easier to bulldoze or burn it, and then build something more sensible.

400A is an absurd number. I live in the northeast have a heated pool, electric water heater, and am putting in heat pumps and it all runs off a 200A. 100A is the standard hookup in my area. I have no idea what this person is doing (are they heating the pool in winter??) but those numbers are absurd. Also a propane pool heater is far cheaper then electric, converting propane to electricity is really crazy when you could just have propane heat, hot water, and pool heater.

My rural home never uses more than 4kW (and even that's rare), so under 20 amps. I can't imagine needing 400A supply without building a machine shop or something.

He said he plans a wood shop in the post

I had the same reaction (European too). If it's in Canada the supply voltage is 120V, so roughly half what we have in Europe, apples-to-apples it's comparable to 200A in Europe.

Still, it's a very high amount of power (48kW) that would not even be subscriptable in France for a consumer (the max is 36kW).

240v is delivered to homes on two legs - the legs are split to make 120v circuits for lighting and wall plugs. 240v circuits with both legs are common for things with a large draw such as HVAC, electric water heaters, electric stoves/ovens, electric dryers, etc.

Remember, they didn't want fossil fuels - if you are going all electric, especially for heating (in CANDADA!) you are going to pull some wattage.

That big outdoor pool - in CANADA - doesn't help either.

Supply is 240V in North America. You probably have multiple 240V circuits at your home, typically for electric range, oven, and clothes dryer at least. It is split into two for regular outlets and lighting.

Very interesting. Here in EU houses usually have three phases @ ~380V, where each phase is ~220V.

US residential service is split phase 120/240, US commercial service is generally 120/208v three-phase or 277/480v three-phase.

I had 400A installed at my house (all electric, solar, batteries, the works). It's still overkill. What's shocking to me isn't that they went with a 400a panel, that I can (and obviously did) justify. It's that it WASN'T ENOUGH and they had to add propane as well. I can't imagine what kind of pool heater they have that needs more than that.

Cool house though.

Since our voltage is 120/240 volt split phase or 120/208 open Y service (less common) we tend to need higher currents for main breakers/fuses. The old standard for a home was 100 amps whereas modern homes are built with 200 amp mains. I suppose the low cost of air conditioning and heat pumps has raised this demand. Otherwise our lighting and appliance loads have become more efficient.

A 230/400V open Y service at 25 amps is just 10kW which to me sounds like an old standard or mains for a small 1-2br apartment. I'd expect at least a 50-60A service. Though I know some (many?) homes in EU are on actual 3 phase so 25A at 400V 3 phase becomes 17.3kW which is not far from the 24kW a 100A 120/240 service provides. Still anemic but quite a bit of power for a 1-4 person household living modestly. Though in the USA it seems utilities make residential 3 phase difficult or impossible to obtain as you might do commercial stuff with that electric without paying commercial rates or your neighborhood is served by a single phase feeder.

My impression is that in many European countries much lower supply ratings are normal (like 25A, I think I've even seen 17A on an apartment with A/C!) and it's just sort of accepted that you will trip the main breaker if you run too many things at once. In the US tripping the main breaker would be a pretty crazy occurrence, we seem to always spec in order to make that very difficult to do. I wonder if one difference is the safety margin applied considering the long trip time for breakers in a light overload condition... if you have say 100A service you could pull 150A for a decently long time before the main trips, perhaps for the runtime of some appliances, and over time that could lead to heat problems.

> if you have say 100A service you could pull 150A for a decently long time before the main trips, perhaps for the runtime of some appliances, and over time that could lead to heat problems.

Depends on the trip curve and the age of the overcurrent device. Looking at the trip curve for a Fuji BW250 (125-250 amp frame size), at 150% the device will trip in what looks like 5-30 minutes. Any load over 10x rated current is an instant trip.

There was a scandal many years ago where an electrical equipment manufacturer, Federal Pacific, was caught rigging its testing machines to pass faulty or poorly performing circuit breakers. It was found that some of those breakers would carry 150%+ rated current without tripping. They were responsible for quite a few electrical fires and were sued into oblivion.

> Am I the only one who almost spit out his coffee when reading this paragraph?

No, I thought that was a typo and should be 40A (so 120V * 40 A or 400V * 12A).

It's not a typo because 400A is indeed the highest tier residential service BC Hydro currently offers[0]. 400A is also in the right ballpark for the amount of equipment he describes.

[0] https://app.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/electrical-connecti...

Oh, I believe that. The number is, well, unbelievable high, so I dismissed it as wrong without further thinking.

The copper coming from "something" will be at least 1/2 inch thick, probably more so that it doesn't lose voltage. We're probably talking a 7/0 cable where 4/0 would be bare minimum.

Probably larger than that. If they’re 200m from the transformer, 400A service requires (3) 1000kcmil cables per leg. 100m drops it to (3) 350kcmil which is still pretty beefy

There are highly efficient heat pump powered water heaters, going out anywhere remote, these and other heat pump systems should really be used. This is a really great overview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto&t=1840s

I knew that was a Technology Connections video before clicking on it :)

The house is obscene, but just because one has 400A service doesn't necessarily mean they're being inefficient in doing so.

It could just be to handle momentary bursts, and the equipment drawing that power might actually be doing the job more efficiently than something that does it slower, drawing more power cumulatively over a longer period of time.

You aren't missing anything, that's pretty ludicrous. My (midwest USA) house has 100A service, and I weld for fun and run a rack with servers. The welder can make the lights dim which makes me want 200A, but 400A is just insane.

It strikes me as high too, but it's possible that he needed more than a 200A 240V main panel to meet code for his very large solar panel system. In the US (I don't know about Canada where the house is) there is a 120% rule, which limits the amount of electricity that the solar panel is allowed to feed into the panel: https://unboundsolar.com/blog/electrical-panel-requirements-....

The idea is that you don't want more energy in the panel than the panel is designed to handle. Practically (if I understand it right) this means that the breaker for the solar panels is limited to 20% of the panel rating. A 200A 240V panel would limit you to a 40A 240V breaker, which (according to the link above) means a maximum of 7.6kW of backfeed solar.

In the article, he says he has a 11.6kW solar array, which would require (if I'm calculating right) at least a 60A 240V breaker (maybe plus some required overcapacity?). Since this isn't allowed on a 200A panel, he may have needed to bump up to the next largest size of 400A unless he wanted to go smaller on the solar array. So while it sounds like overkill, it's possible there is more reason for it than just a desire to heat his wife's outdoor pool in the winter.

I investigated solar and generation requires appropriately sized circuits and capacity, even if the direction is the opposite.

so 100A panel + 100A of solar requires a 200A panel

A few other things that require high-amp service - on demand electric water heating, and electric car charging (and we're moving towards multiple vehicles).

It's also worth mentioning that by far the largest cost of an electrical circuit is the labor, so sizing for 100A, 200A and 400A is not 1x, 2x, 4x. upgrading later is a huge cost.

It's 400A peak usage, not average. Different decisions could have been made to lower that peak load considerably. As another commenter mentioned, swapping out the tankless water heater which can trip a standard house's electrical connection all on its own.

As someone who lives in the US, yes, 400A is insane.

It's entirely reasonable if they have a tankless water heater + electric heat. The amount of powerdraw that can be required during a shower means I would trip a 200A circuit during the winter. Average powerdraw would certainly be much lower, but you have to prepare for the peaks. Adding in an electric pool heater, more square footage to heat, and probably a fancy electric range, means you could hit 400A somewhat easily if you aren't being careful.

In a newly built 2500sqft house you should need a lot less than 200A for this, it should have almost perfect insulation.

That, and tankless water heater are stupid, frankly.

Nobody should be running electric heat (resistance heat, COP=1), since we now have heat pump technology that can operate below 0F and do so with COPs of at least 2. Electric tankless WHs are also a terrible idea in almost all cases. A HPWH or standard electric tank would be much better for overall power demand.

Using 400A consistently would be insane. Building the capacity to support 400A but using much, much less on average is... prudent, especially when building a house that is remote.

Just because you prudently plan for 400A of peak capacity doesn't mean you would actually come anywhere near using it at any given time. Part of building a house in the woods is planning for contingencies.

I feel downright minimalist now with my 120A/120V grid service.

Totally agree. I can't warp my head around the effect of this house in environmental impact including using cars all the time, disrupting local fauna and the energy costs.

I also did. Another ridiculous thing was that the article initially claimed no fossil fuels, but the one thing they couldn't live without was wood-burning fireplaces. I mean don't they both generate large amounts of carbon dioxide?

Wood is not a fossil fuel unless you’re burning petrified wood or coal (and somehow calling that wood).

Fossil fuels are from carbon sources taken out of the normal carbon cycle (aka buried generally)

I understand wood is not a fossil fuel. But doesn't burning wood have the same environmental effect as burning fossil fuel? They both produce large amounts of CO2 and generate heat. If you didn't burn that wood, those would still be trees capturing CO2 from the atmosphere. So they didn't really achieve anything, did they?

(This is way outside of my expertise so I appreciate if you tell me what's wrong with my logic.)

If there is a tree, it is composed of carbon it extracted from the atmosphere using sunlight. For that tree to exist, -1 tree worth of carbon (roughly) was removed.

If you chop it down and burn it, or it dies and rots, +1 tree of carbon goes back. But the total carbon in the system hasn’t changed, and on average (if this happens a lot everywhere), the amount of carbon in the atmosphere is pretty much the same.

nothing lives forever, and most things stop growing quickly pretty fast. Unless there is a huge disaster, forests turn over in a stable way generally - new trees always growing, old trees always dying and rotting.

So unless you had chopped down massive forests and stopped new trees from growing, or stockpiled half a continents worth of wood for a century and then decided to burn it all at once, it’s hard to meaningfully change the average amount of carbon in the atmosphere, because it never really stops ‘moving’ or gets out of the cycle.

Fossil fuel is carbon that got pulled out of the system a long time ago - those trees or ferns or peat or whatever got stuck underground, where they couldn’t rot or burn, and on a scale that IS continents worth of trees, for millions of years. We don’t know what it is like having that amount of carbon in the system, because the last time it was in the system was millions of years before we existed.

Once those fossil fuels get burned, even if you plant trees, it doesn’t really reduce the amount of carbon back to where it was, because those trees will die and rot or burn or whatever, and on average, the total amount of carbon in circulation is now higher.

Does that help?

Yes. Thank you!

I have 3*25A in a relatively old, three-story house in Sweden. Heated with a heat pump. I assumed 400A was a typo but apparently not? I guess it makes sense considering the heating of the pool, the large surface area and maybe an EV.

Maybe they want to supercharge 2 or 3 EVs at once.

The current tesla wall charger will charge 48A and requires a dedicated 60A circuit. The previous model wall charger would charge 80A and required a 100A circuit.

You can limit the charging current but at some point you will have to make compromises on driving.

this is all for one car.

For multiple cars, the compromises get trickier.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com